Duty, by Robert Gates / Jacquelyn Martin, AP

by Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY

by Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY

The former Defense secretary has legions of admirers at the Pentagon, many more among readers of his best-selling memoir Duty, and more than a few bureaucrats and brass who respected and feared his quick draw for failing to speed gear to troops in need.

And then there's Franz Gayl.

Gayl, a civilian Marine Corps science adviser and retired officer, writes in the latest edition of Defense Newsabout Gates more with disappointment than admiration.

"Robert Gates paints a noble self-portrait. However, his recollections related to the mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicle suffer from tunnel vision. Gates fails to note that MRAP was a team achievement."

Alrighty, then.

That Gayl gores Gates is to be expected. Gayl's been poking everybody from Marine officers to the SecDef, prodding them years before most anybody had heard of MRAPs much less the crash program to churn them out at a cost of $40 billion.

Gates fails to credit those who first saw the potential of the armored trucks to protect troops from improvised explosive devices (IEDs), Gayl writes. He adds that the only folks who suffered from the delay in fielding them - apart from the troops who died or were maimed in flimsy Humvees - were lower-level guys like him who pointed out their bosses' failings.

Is he right? Does Gates gloss over the good work of many in the military and in Congress, like then-Sen. Joe Biden, an early MRAP advocate, and hog too much credit?

Certainly Gates' summary of the MRAP saga in his book skips over the bureaucratic process that had ground on for years before he arrived late in 2006. Gayl and others had, in fact, pushed for the production of hundreds of MRAPs in use in Iraq.

Just as certain, Gates couldn't be expected to know about every vehicle program in the sprawling military portfolio. He'd been on the job less than half a year when his military adviser at the time, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, called his attention to our story about the success that Marines in Anbar province had been having with MRAPs.

Did I mention that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were going badly, too? Gates had a lot on his plate.

Gates notes his book - as we have time and time again - that our story prompted him to push for more MRAPs. There's no reason to doubt that's true. And it's just as true that those MRAPs wouldn't have been in Iraq if it hadn't been for Gayl, et al, pushing for the early shipments.

What the MRAP program needed to evolve from a niche truck for troops clearing roads to the workhorse for carrying them to war was a high-profile kick in the pants from somebody like Gates.

Walk near his old office today, and you'll see Gates' official portrait. In it, Gates leans against his desk. A model of an MRAP rests on top.

Gayl's on much firmer footing in writing that nobody at a high level was held to account for delays in fielding the trucks. His Marine Corps superiors sat on an urgent need request in 2005 resulting in delays that cost countless lives. The Army, too, knew about the Humvee's vulnerability to IEDs since at least the early 1990s.

Those who blew the whistle on delays, Gayl writes, watched as their "careers, including mine, were subsequently destroyed by Marine Corps leaders at Gates' Pentagon."

Gates was "duty-bound to get to the bottom of the MRAP delay and ensure accountability to prevent 'business as usual' practices, while protecting those who challenge them. He did neither," Gayl writes.

In Duty, Gates writes that the "villains were the largely nameless and faceless people - and their leaders - who were wed to their old plans, programs and thinking and refused to change their ways regardless of circumstances."

In the end, no generals or senior officials were fired for the delays. But Gayl has been involved in endless litigation over retaliation and his career stuck in a cul de sac at the Pentagon.

Ironically, Gates, on his farewell tour of military academies, urged cadets and midshipmen to display the same sort of courage that Gayl displayed, "to press ahead at the risk of their careers in the face of incredible institutional resistance. He warned them: "In most of those cases, integrity and courage were ultimately rewarded professionally. In a perfect world, that should always happen. But sadly, in the real world it does not, and I will not pretend that there is no risk."

Gayl could lecture aspiring officers on the downside of what Gates writes about speaking "truth to power" at the Pentagon.